Israel-Gaza war live: Two American hostages released by Hamas

Hamas has freed an American woman and her teenage daughter it had held hostage in the Gaza Strip, Israel said, the first such release from among around 200 people the militant group abducted during its October 7 rampage through southern Israel.

Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie are out of the Gaza Strip and in the hands of the Israeli military, an army spokesman said. Hamas said it had released them for humanitarian reasons in an agreement with the Qatari government.

The release comes amid growing expectations of a ground offensive that Israel says is aimed at rooting out Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip.

Judith and Natalie Ranaan had been on a trip from their home in suburban Chicago to Israel to celebrate the Jewish holidays, family said.

They were in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, near Gaza, on October 7 – Simchat Torah, a festive Jewish holiday – when Hamas fighters stormed out of the territory into southern Israeli towns, killing hundreds and abducting 203 others.

The family heard nothing from them after the attack and were later told by US and Israeli officials that they were being held in Gaza, Natalie’s brother Ben said.

The father of freed American teen hostage Natalie Raanan said she’s doing well following two weeks in captivity after she and her mother were abducted in Israel by Hamas and held in Gaza.

Uri Raanan of Illinois told The Associated Press that he spoke to his daughter on Friday by telephone.

“She’s doing good. She’s doing very good,” said Mr Raanan, who lives in the Chicago suburbs. “I’m in tears, and I feel very, very good.”

The 71-year-old said he saw on the news earlier that an American mother and daughter would be released by Hamas, and he spent the day hoping that meant his daughter and her mother, Judith Raanan.

Knowing Natalie may be able to celebrate her 18th birthday next week at home with family and friends feels “wonderful. The best news,” he said.

He said he believes Natalie and Judith to be in transit to Tel Aviv to reunite with relatives, and that both will be back in the US early next week.

The White House has stepped back from Joe Biden’s comment apparently agreeing that Israel should delay a potential ground invasion of Gaza until more hostages can get out, saying the US president did not fully hear the question.

Reuters reported that late on Friday, reporters shouted questions at Biden as he was climbing the stairs to board Air Force One, over the sound of the plane’s engines. One of the questions was whether Israel should delay an invasion of Gaza until more hostages can get out.

White House says Mr Biden “didn’t hear the full question” and was only commenting on whether he wanted to see more hostages released; schools told to evacuate are in Gaza City close to the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital.

“The president was far away. He didn’t hear the full question,” White House communications director Ben LaBolt said.

“The question sounded like: ‘Would you like to see more hostages released?’ He wasn’t commenting on anything else.”

The comedian and actor, 58, is currently touring the UK as part of his Good Times tour and has been posting on social media about the war.

On Thursday (19 October), Djalili was scheduled to perform at the Festival Drayton Centre in West Drayton, Shropshire. However, the show was pulled hours before its scheduled opening due to safety concerns for the star.

It has been nearly a week since the first Israeli evacuation orders were handed down to Palestinian civilians in Gaza to head southward, sparking fears that a ground offensive in the north was imminent.

After Hamas militants broke into Israel on 7 October, killing more than a thousand innocent victims, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been clear that a retaliatory attack to “destroy” the group will happen.

Through extensive research and conversations with experts, The Independent explains what this incursion could look like and the myriad hurdles that Israel must overcome to make sure it is a success.

Read the full analysis here

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan said there was “concern” about the location of a stage next to the war memorial at a similar demonstration last week.

Mr Adelekan added that more than 1,000 officers will be deployed to police the demonstration on Saturday in central London arranged by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Stop the War Coalition and other activist groups.

Nearly two weeks after Hamas militants left his village scorched and shattered, Shachar Butler returned to bury a friend who was slain. But it was the town itself, a quarter of its residents dead or missing, that he eulogized.

“It was the happiest place alive. It was a green place, with animals and birds and kids running around,” Butler said Thursday, standing in a landscape of ransacked homes and bullet-riddled cars, the heat thick with the odor of death.

“They burned the houses while the people were inside,” said Butler, a father of three who spent hours trading gunfire with militants on Oct. 7. “The people who came out are the people who got kidnapped, killed, executed, slaughtered. … It’s unimaginable. It’s just unimaginable.”

There’s a saying among us videojournalists: May the news stay far from your home. But on Saturday, Oct. 7, it came terrifyingly close to my hometown.

While I live in Jerusalem, where I work as a cameraman for The Associated Press, I was raised in Ofakim, a city a half-hour drive from the border with Gaza. My mother, parents-in-law and siblings still call it home. I met my wife there.

It was a tight-knit and safe community, made up of some 13,000 working-class Jews of North African descent. Everybody knew everybody.

Judith and Natalie Raanan, who were kidnapped by Hamas two weeks ago, have been pictured for the first time after being released.

The American mother and daughter were pictured on Friday night walking to freedom while holding hands with Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for the captives and missing.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has met with the boss of the BBC to express its “outrage” over the broadcaster’s use of language to describe Hamas and its “damaging” coverage of the immediate aftermath of the bombing of a hospital in Gaza City.

The corporation said it is “committed to continued dialogue” following Friday’s meeting, at which the Board of Deputies said the BBC was “left in no doubt as to the strength of feeling in the Jewish community”.

BBC director general Tim Davie met Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl and its chief executive Michael Wegier.

The Board of Deputies, which describes itself as the voice of the Jewish community in Britain, said the BBC had confirmed it is no longer the corporation’s practice to call Hamas militants, but instead is describing the group as a proscribed terrorist organisation by the UK Government and others, or simply as Hamas.